Sometimes an acronym is used for so long that people consider it a solid word, and forget that each letter stands for something else. Common examples are laser (Light Amplification through Stimulated Emission of Radiation), radar (RAdio Detecting And Ranging), and sonar (SOund NAvigation and Ranging). But what of unpronouncable acronyms, those that must be spoken as their individual letters? All too often, one of these acronyms will be used, and followed by the last word in the acronym spoken outright. Examples of these redundancies include:

Oh, I hate that! The one that irritates me the most, since I hear it so often, is "pin number". This could be said "pi number", but that means something completely different (-: I can't think of any others at the moment except "HTML language" and "ASP page".

Disclaimer: Wordsmith.org is not responsible for views expressed on this site.
Use of this forum is at your own risk and liability - you agree to
hold Wordsmith.org and its associates harmless as a condition of using it.